Inside Edgar Allan Poe's Poems

This is just an essay that I had to write with two other people for english this week. The assignment was to pick five poems from one author and annotate them and write a style analysis. I hope everyone likes it and if you have any suggestions of how to fix it, let me know so I can tell the other two girls and we can get a good grade!!! lol. Thanks!!! Enjoy!!! :D

Submitted: February 20, 2010

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Submitted: February 20, 2010

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Inside Edgar Allan Poe’s Poems

“And travelers, now, within that valley,

Through the red-litten windows see

Vast forms, that move fantastically

To a discordant melody,

While, like a ghastly rapid river,

Through the pale door

A hideous throng rush out forever

And laugh- but smile no more.”

This is the sixth stanza from the poem “The Haunted Palace” by Edgar Allan Poe. The imagery means that travelers passing by the
palace (or the speaker) love the image they see on the outside but on the inside the speaker’s life isn’t what it seems because of his mistakes and problems. Edgar Allan Poe’s most common pieces of
literature are Gothic fiction about mourning and dark romanticism. Poe believed that quality literature should be brief and focus on a specific effect hidden beneath the surface. During his life he
went through a lot of hard things, like his father abandoning him and his mother, his mom dieing, being adopted, and then his wife dieing shortly after they married, which might explain the dark
elements in Poe’s poems. The poems A Valentine, The Haunted Palace, The Happiest Day, A Dream, and Annabel Lee by Edgar Allan Poe are all about love, life, and mistakes.

Edgar Allan Poe expressed true love in very deep and expressive ways. “Than to love and be loved by me” is one of the many
lines in “Annabel Lee” that talks about love. He says that their love is “stronger by far than the love of those who were older than we”. Basically he is saying that their relationship is
wise and passionate and bright. He is passionately in love and he only sees his Annabel Lee. He says, “the stars never rise but I see the bright eyes of the beautiful Annabel Lee” where we
see that he is madly in love. Edgar Allan Poe uses many metaphors and a deeper meaning behind the words to explain his love the girl. When Annabel Lee dies, he explains how his love for her will
last for eternity. Edgar Allan Poe uses amazing metaphors to explain powerful, strong, and undying love.

A lot of the poems Edgar Allan Poe wrote have to do with the different aspects of life. Love is in a lot of his poems since it is
an important aspect of life. Like the poem “Annabel Lee”, which is entirely about love. Some of his poems have the message that people might not always be what they seem, like the poem “The Haunted
Palace”. There is a huge shift, showing that things might be different under the surface. In the poem “A Dream” the theme seems to be that life gets better. In “The Happiest Day” the theme is that
you will be happier when you aren’t to prideful. Most of Edgar Allan Poe’s poems have to do with life and he seems to enjoy writing about it.

The poems by Edgar Allan Poe have a lot to do with mistakes and learning from those mistakes. “A hideous throng rush out
forever and laugh-but smile no more.” This line was taken from the poem “The Haunted Palace” and it means that the speaker can laugh sarcastically at his mistakes but not really smile because
they never truly go away. In “The Haunted Palace” Edgar Allan Poe uses imagery to make himself seem like the palace. He appears to be happy and extravagant on the outside, but on the inside in his
heart he is really troubled and “haunted” because of his mistakes. “The venom thou hast poured on me," is taken from the poem “The Happiest Day.” The venom is his pride and it being poured
on him means that he got cocky, which was a mistake and ruined his happiest day. This is a way to use imagery to say something that could be said simply and plainly in a poetic way. In the poem “A
Dream” Edgar Allan Poe uses figurative language in the line that says, “What could there be more purely bright in Truth’s day star?". This means that the speaker is seeing the light in his
mistakes and he is learning from them. “Ev’n then I felt- that brightest hour- I would not live again” is from the poem “The Happiest Day”. The speaker is realizing that because of his
mistakes of being to prideful and powerful, that he missed out on the best day of his life. Edgar Allan Poe uses imagery and metaphors in his poems to express his emotions of his
mistakes.

Many of the poems written by Edgar Allan Poe are full of emotion and seem very personal. He reflects on life and everything that
comes with it (like love and making mistakes) through imagery, rhythm, voice, tone, and other literary devices. The poems A Valentine, The Happiest Day, The Haunted Palace, A Dream, and Annabel Lee
by Edgar Allan Poe all relate to love, life, and making mistakes and learning from them. If you look under the surface of the imagery and metaphors, you can find a deeper meaning and discover that
the emotions are pure.

If you want to read the full poems mentioned in this essay or other poems written by Edgar Allan Poe then here's a website
for them!!!!http://www.blackcatpoems.com/p/edgar_allan_poe.html